


Reverse Curse

by Miss_M



Category: Moonstruck (1987)
Genre: F/M, Family, Food, Gen, Humor, Marriage, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: “A minute ago, Ronny was under a curse you were gonna break with your cooking!”
Relationships: Cosmo Castorini/Rose Castorini, Ronny Cammareri/Loretta Castorini
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Reverse Curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PineapplePrincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PineapplePrincess/gifts).



> Hope this hits the spot!
> 
> I own nothing.

Loretta spat out the mouthful of warm ciabatta into her handkerchief. “Oh my God. Ronny! What did you do to this bread?”

“I ain’t done nothing to it! It came out of the oven like that,” Ronny said. His face was all thunder, but he also looked nervous when he nudged a cardboard box with _Cammareri Bros. Bakery_ written on the lid in cursive closer to Loretta. “Try the cannoli.”

Loretta didn’t want to hurt Ronny’s feelings, but she also didn’t want to try the cannoli. She picked one up with her thumb and forefinger and took a tiny bite. 

That one went right into her pocket handkerchief too.

“Tastes like chalk and that pink stuff you bite into at the dentist’s. Oh Ronny, what happened?” Loretta grabbed her husband’s good hand.

Ronny’s wooden hand beat a hollow tattoo on Rose Castorini’s much-scrubbed kitchen table. “I don’t know. Ever since we come back from our honeymoon, it’s been like this. I’m starting to lose customers, Loretta. It’s bad.” 

Loretta dropped his hand. “You got bad luck.”

Ronny laughed. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, yes you do. Someone cursed us, and now your baking’s no good.” Loretta jumped out of her chair and started pacing around the kitchen. “I knew it, I knew this would happen! We’re just always going to have bad luck.”

Ronny stood and rounded the table, on a course to intercept Loretta’s pacing, but before he could grab her up in his arms and give her a squeeze to distract her and calm her down, Loretta turned to the door leading into the hall and yelled: “Ma! Come down here!”

Ronny muttered a curse which Loretta pretended not to hear. He sat back down and buried his head in his hand.

Rose came into the kitchen, in her housecoat and slippers. “What is it?”

Loretta held out the ciabatta. “Taste this.”

Rose tore off a piece, sniffed it, chewed, plunged her hands in her housecoat pockets, rocked her head from side to side, and gestured wildly at Loretta.

Loretta passed her handkerchief to her mother. Rose spat into it. 

“You trying to poison me, Ronny?” Rose said once she’d recovered her dignity and poured herself a glass of water. “You know this house ain’t worth that much, and anyway Cosmo don’t like ciabatta. Says it sticks between his teeth.”

Ronny opened his mouth to reassure her his intentions were not murderous – or maybe to pick a fight with his mother-in-law – but Loretta blurted out: “Ma, Ronny’s got bad luck. Someone’s cursed his baking to taste awful.”

“Hmmm.” Rose drained her glass. “You got any enemies, Ronny?”

Ronny started to say no, paused to think, then nodded sheepishly. He volunteered no names. 

Rose joined him at the table. “I don’t mean the half of Brooklyn you must’ve annoyed with your temper and your carrying on. I mean closer to home, someone with a real vendetta. Loretta, sit down, you’re making me nervous.”

Loretta reluctantly complied. “You’re not thinking it’s Ronny’s mother.”

“Nah, she’s never liked me,” Ronny said. “She don’t care who I marry.” But he said this with a smile for Loretta, picked up her hand, and kissed it. 

Rose ignored this display and Loretta blushing. “What about someone you fired recently? Someone unhappy with how much you pay them?”

“I treat everybody right who treats me right.”

Loretta gasped. Ronny and Rose both looked at her.

“What about that gal who works at the bakery?” Loretta said, trying her damnedest not to sound jealous. She’d seen how people could get when they loved someone and got scared over it – it was never pretty. “I only met her once or twice, but she seemed pretty cut up about us getting married.”

Ronny laughed. Seeing the women’s faces, he coughed. “Chrissy? Chrissy ain’t a witch, and she ain’t capable of sabotage. She’s worked for me since she was sixteen.”

“Right, so she knows how the bakery operates,” Rose said, omitting the part about how Ronny was blinder than a one-eyed donkey and wouldn’t notice affection he didn’t reciprocate if it grew long, sharp teeth and bit him. “She must have seen you prepare the dough lots of times.”

Ronny still seemed unconvinced. “I guess. She gets a little intense sometimes.”

A rare moment of silence descended on the Castorini kitchen. Ronny’s wife and mother-in-law were staring at him with identical expressions.

“She gets intense. You don’t say,” Loretta said before she turned to her mother: “So what do we do? Ronny’s losing customers, but it ain’t her fault she feels bad and doesn’t know what do to about it.”

Rose tamped down the swell of pride in her daughter which bloomed in her chest. “You invite her here to lunch. Let me get a good look at her. Maybe all she needs is someone to hear her tale of woe, and then she’ll settle down.”

Loretta nodded and stood up, but Ronny remained in his chair. “You don’t think she might get scared and lash out if we corner her?” he said.

“So let your wife do the talking first, and if the girl says no, then you ask her. Nicely, Ronny. And make sure there’s no sharp bread knives close by. No use taking chances.”

Loretta grabbed his arm and pulled him out into the hall, saying she didn’t want to waste time laying their bad luck to rest. Ronny let himself be steered by Loretta, still shaking his head. 

Left alone, Rose sighed, pushed herself slowly up and out of her chair, and went to check her stockpile of garlic. Good thing she’d gone to the market early that morning, before all the best shellfish got snatched up…

“Don’t touch that cannoli,” she said without turning around. “Doctor said no sugar, and you’ll spoil your appetite forever if you eat those.”

Cosmo, who’d snuck into the kitchen on what he thought were little cat feet, stood affronted by the kitchen table, his hand still reaching for the open box from Ronny’s bakery. 

“I was just going to look at them, Rose. You don’t know I was gonna eat them. Anyway, did I just hear Loretta and Ronny tear out of here like the feds are after them?”

“Loretta thinks Ronny’s employee put a curse on him to make all his baking taste awful because she’s in love with him but he loves Loretta. I told them to bring the girl here for lunch, so I can talk to her, make her see sense and not feel like nobody gives two hoots about her feelings,” Rose explained, picking four cloves of garlic and pulling out her chopping board.

Cosmo went over the individual parts of that story, looking for something he might lean on and not fall over, and settled on: “Fine. I don’t want to be involved. What are you making?”

“Spaghetti alle vongole. Don’t you want to know if the girl could have cursed Ronny?”

“I know she didn’t curse him.”

Rose half turned and appraised Cosmo standing there, still watching the cannoli. “That’s right, she didn’t. If Ronny’s got any kind of curse, it’s of his own making. When he was miserable and angry at God Himself, his baking was fine. Then he married Loretta, so his baking went bad. Can’t have everything be perfect. It’s a reverse curse: it don’t kill you, but you gotta live your whole life with things never fitting quite right.”

Cosmo looked like he’d latch onto that last comment and start a fight, but the smugness already dawning on his face before Rose’s little speech won out. “Rose, Rose, Rose. You and your curses. Ronny Cammareri’s baking has always been awful. He’s gotta be the worst baker from here to Hoboken. Everybody knows it, but everybody kept buying from him because they felt sorry for him after what happened with his fiancée and his hand. Now he’s taken care of, people don’t want to eat that garbage no more.”

Rose put down her chopping knife. “What are you talking about? Since when do Italians eat bad food out of pity? You just like to contradict me.”

Cosmo pointed his forefinger at his wife the way he’d seen Matlock do to witnesses on the TV. “If Ronny’s baking’s so good, how come you never buy from him?” he asked triumphantly.

“‘Cause it’s a ten-block walk! There’s half a dozen bakeries in between, why would I ever go to Ronny’s?”

Cosmo threw up his hands. “Fine, have it your way.”

He exited the kitchen, his head held high. Rose yelled after him: “You think you’re wise, Cosmo, but you don’t know everything!”

She craned her neck, but she couldn’t see far down the hall from her place by the stove, so she followed her husband out of the kitchen.

Cosmo was by the front door, in his overcoat and hat, pulling on his galoshes. 

“Where are you going now?” Rose demanded.

“I’m going to your brother’s store. Can’t eat spaghetti alle vongole without fresh basil. We’re gonna need another bottle of wine too, if we’re having guests.” 

“One guest. Cosmo?” 

“What?”

Rose smiled. “Ti amo.”

Cosmo’s belligerent expression softened. “Anch’io ti amo.” He kissed his fingertips and spread them like a flower in Rose’s direction. 

“And you’re gonna take on Ronny as an apprentice,” Rose added, still smiling.

Cosmo’s face fell. “I don’t need an apprentice.”

“Oh yes you do, because you are getting old and someone has to inherit the business one day. Chiro’s in Florida, Loretta’s got her own work, and Ronny’s gonna need a new job.”

“A minute ago, Ronny was under a curse you were gonna break with your cooking!” Cosmo covered his ears with his hands, tried to open the front door with his elbow, gave up, and used one of his hands. The other one remained clapped to his ear. “I am not hearing this. A one-handed plumber! You’re crazy.”

Still complaining, he went out into the spring drizzle and pulled the door shut. 

Feeling triumphant, Rose took a moment to enjoy the silence and draw a deep breath: garlic, furniture polish, baked goods, dog hair. Home. Then she climbed the stairs to check on the Old Man and the dogs before she resumed preparing lunch – five dogs and her father-in-law making no noise for more than a few minutes at a time was rarely if ever a good sign.


End file.
